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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30050100">Personal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignis_kun/pseuds/ignis_kun'>ignis_kun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Reminiscing, Tea, Theres some reminiscing in the good way, Trauma, Very Rantaro-centric, but not in the good way, graphic depictions of violence are in dream form, mentioned child death, no beta we die like men</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-04-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:42:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30050100</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignis_kun/pseuds/ignis_kun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rantaro is disturbed by nightmares. Shuichi tries to help.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amami Rantaro &amp; Amami Rantaro's Sisters, Amami Rantaro/Saihara Shuichi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Personal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This does take place during COVID times! But it only really gets brought up near the end. Also a whole lot of fuckinnnn metaphor in this because that is my shit.</p><p>Also: I do want to make it clear that there's a bit of a dark twist I've put on the missing sister's situation in my own iteration of Amami. One of Amami's sisters in this is implied to be dead, and he had to identify the body. The rest are alive, however!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rantaro’s dream begins the same as it always does. </p><p>He’s twelve again, caught in a weaving crowd of tourists. It's busy, people left and right slowly fading across the scenery. He's trying to get through but he's bumping into every person on the sidewalk. He's yelling her name, but there's no response. He can see her, just beyond a few people. Yellow ribbon and all. She fades off. She veers right, and Rantaro follows after her. </p><p>Mokiro is then in an alley. She's dead, face pale and hands. In some strange alleyway, and he's left with the pit in his stomach.</p><p>Then everything becomes a blur. He's in an interrogation room with a broken septum piercing, he's in an alleyway with a knife to his throat, he's biting at zip ties around his wrist, he's going places he shouldn't be, he's cliff diving and doing it wrong, there's another gash in his back, he's in a car crash, everything always mixes together into the same room, same, ugly colour that he can't place a name to and he thinks he should be feeling pain but he'd not feeling pain and there's another scar and there's a graveyard then there's the poppies of Flanders red vibrant and imprinted into his mind and then</p><p>Rantaro does not awake gently.</p><p>He wakes, shakes running through his body as they always do.</p><p>He feels frozen in place: the bedsheet is tape and he is the adhered.</p><p> </p><p>Saihara is still beside him, slowly breathing as the small light of the moon drifts in. Now that he thinks about it, it's been a long time since he's had one this bad. That felt like it dragged on for so long. That had those abrupt cuts and neverending doorways and</p><p>“Rantaro?” </p><p> </p><p>He feels like a convict caught on the run. As if the detective, looking right between his eyes was going to arrest him and take him in for the heinous crime of waking up at an unholy hour in the morning (he doesn't like to think of the idea of Saihara arresting him, considering what happened last time he was arrested. He doesn't like to think about it).<br/><br/>The detective’s eyes meet just right between his own. Never too directly in them.</p><p>“Is something wrong?”</p><p>Rantaro hadn't even realized.</p><p>"I." Rantaro is lost for words, "I'm alright. Don't worry about me. You can just go back to bed."<br/><br/>The lamp on his boyfriend's end is turned on, the new golden glow filling the room. It's at that moment Rantaro knows that Saihara's not going to go back to bed. He remembers a few times during the start of their relationship where it would just be a quick <em>'if you're sure' </em>and that was the end of the story. Rantaro would run a cold shower for a half-hour, maybe an hour, then come back, skin freezing to the touch, and slip back into bed where he'd find Saihara already fast asleep. Sometimes Saihara would jolt awake at the sudden sensation, others he would stay fast asleep.<br/><br/>They've changed though. They've talked about this.</p><p>Saihara holds his hands out, to be met by Rantaro’s own. Funny how he’s being given a bit of a taste of his own treatment. He breathes slowly. In for three, out for three. A familiar pattern of numbers recited in his own head and released with each passing breath. He gives Saihara's hand a squeeze. It's comforting, and he falls into it.</p><p>Rantaro gets lost in his thoughts. The memory of gently crashing waves at his feet when he was younger. A trip to the beach. He walked along the shore on his own. Wanted to go on his own little adventure as always. Found a few good, flat rocks. They skimmed nicely across the waters, even with the ebbing and flowing tide.</p><p>Yeah, his first trip with Shuichi. It's almost funny thinking back on it, before they were even a couple they were pretty close to one another. Shuichi was one of the very few that Rantaro felt he could bear a bit of his soul to without him running to the hills. He taught Shuichi how to skip a rock properly. The right stone to use. They took a nice walk, barefoot across the shore. The feeling of the warm beach against his feet, he believes, is one of the simple pleasures in life that everyone should experience at least once (given there's no glass).<br/><br/>Then there were the stars in the sky. Laying in the sand, it's like glitter. You still find it, picking it off your fabric when you thought it wasn't there before. When you think you've washed it away and it stays. The sand wasn't something he wanted to wash away.<br/><br/><br/><em>"You're a Virgo, right Shuichi?"<br/><br/>"Ah, yeah, I think so."<br/><br/>Rantaro shifted over, closer to Shuichi, pointing one of his hands up at the sky and tracing the outline of the constellation. <br/><br/>"Should be right around there. Shows up around here at this time of year." <br/></em></p><p> </p><p>Perhaps he craves that simplicity sometimes. It’s hard for everyone to not want it every so often. To go back and change how you did things before. <br/><br/><br/>Rantaro snaps out of his haze.</p><p>“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”</p><p>“You can talk about it.” </p><p>“Just another bad dream.”<br/><br/>“Me or..?”<br/><br/>“Yeah. Her.”</p><p>Saihara nods. It's par for the course.<br/><br/></p><p>“You don’t need to worry.” Rantaro drops Sahara's left hand, holding the other in tandem with his right, pressing the cusped hand close to his lips. Breathing into the skin for a moment, before pressing a gentle kiss onto the surface, glistening in the moonlight. He needs Saihara closer than ever now. He needs to know he's here right now.</p><p>“Nothing I can do now that she’s gone.” The adventurer can feel the tears welling up in his eyes. It's been so many years since Mokiro was found, but it still stings over half a decade later. It hurts so bad he can't begin to describe it.<br/><br/>Saihara silently slips his hands out of Rantaro's, instead sliding them past his sides and onto his back, coaxing him into a hug. Rantaro wraps his arms around Saihara in return, slowly breathing. He gently buries himself into the other's shoulder, stuttering breaths escaping his mouth. He feels twice his own weight. Saihara must find him heavy like this.<br/><br/>When Rantaro cries, it's quiet. Just little shakes and sobs when he, truthfully, wants nothing more than to scream. At the reflection in the mirror, at the sky and the rain and the thunder as it pours down until his chest hurts and his lungs strain from the pressure and lack of air. To have someone to blame other than himself for his own negligence. To say it was the cruelty of the world, to say it was his father's fault for leaving them to their own devices, to say it was just fate and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.<br/><br/>He was young, but that does not take away blame. He lost her in that marketplace. He lost sight of her and the next time he saw her was when they couldn't tell if it was her or not. He had to look at clothes. Fabric full of dirt. And he had to say it was hers. When he was only 15. She was so much younger though. Too young to go.<br/><br/>The house was sombre after that day. Echoes of a house once lively bouncing off the walls, the light faded into nothing. Just him and his father at that point. His step-mother too, of course. The sun had fallen and Rantaro was left to watch the dissolving red hues fade over the horizon before he had even realized the day had ended. And then there was the stars and the black of night. <br/><br/>He went out to sail. <br/><br/>"Rantaro."<br/><br/>The day ended and he didn't even notice the clock dwindling down.<br/><br/>"Rantaro?"</p><p>Shuichi's looking up at him, clear concern. The same expression he got when Lucy, their cat, got out of the house and they spent hours looking for her only to find her hiding under the couch. But it's.. softer. Just a little hazier. He relaxes his hands. He hadn't realized how much he was gripping onto the back of Saihara's shirt.<br/><br/>"Sorry. You lost me for a second there." A watery chuckle. Rantaro places a quick kiss on his forehead, lingering for a few moments longer, "Should be able to manage these things by now, y'know? You don't need to worry like this."</p><p>The words taste bittersweet slipping off his tongue. The hypocrisy of all of it.<br/>"I don't mind helping, Rantaro. We're together, right?"<br/>It's funny how Shuichi has always referred to it. Never dating, never that they're a couple, just together. Like he'd spontaneously combust by using any other word (Rantaro doesn't doubt it, the first time he tried to call him by a pet name he went fully red. He didn't know that anyone could get redder than that until he teased him a bit about it and Shuichi's head fell into his hands in an attempt to hide said blush. Teasing him can be cute sometimes).<br/><br/>"Of course."<br/>He's still wondering how heavy he felt to Shuichi as the detective moves back, propping himself up on the backboard.<br/><br/>"Do you want me to go get tea?"<br/>Really taking a page out of his book, isn't he?<br/>"Don't worry, I can get it."<br/>"You always take care of me. Let me take care of you."<br/><br/>Rantaro stays silent, giving a quick nod before Shuichi exits the room.<br/><br/>A glance over to the clock. It's early in the morning. 3 AM. Shuichi usually wakes up for work in three hours. Probably hasn't gotten near enough sleep yet. Shuichi always has a hard time falling asleep. He remembers during their high school days always checking in to see if he had gotten enough sleep (it came off to him as casual concern at the time - just looking after a classmate, but he knows now it's a bit more than that). The answer more often than not was no, or that he hadn't slept at all. He knows now that it isn't much different. He can't count the number of times he's woken up in the middle of the night to see Shuichi still working on something, and had to convince him to go to bed and pick things up in the morning.<br/><br/>He can hear the kettle click on from a few rooms over, followed by a trill, a few coos. Lucy, of course. Seems like he's woken up the entire house.<br/><br/>His therapist keeps telling him he shouldn't worry about things like this so much. That he should believe people when they want to care for him. Let them do it, and sometimes he shouldn't protest. That he isn't a burden. It's going to be a long process to learn these things, he knows that as painful fact. Yet, it's not that it's hard to believe. Just hard to not fall back into old habits. Wanting to care for himself while answering the beck and call of everyone else around him. <br/><br/>Saihara's back inside in a few minutes, and places a cup of tea beside him before shifting back into his place on the bed. Left side. Closest to the wall.<br/><br/>Rantaro gives a smile and takes a sip, Saihara's head resting next to his shoulder. It's not boiled too hot, he doesn't like it scolding like Shuichi does. Black. Mint and licorice. Non-caffeinated. They need to order more groceries soon.<br/><br/>For a moment, he's able to feel the security he most often provides. The warmth residing on his hands is inviting as he takes a sip.<br/><br/>Although, he does find something when he looks back over at Saihara.<br/>"You didn't get yourself one too?"<br/><br/>He looks off to the side. <br/>"No, ah. I don't like the mint tea. If I have any oolong right now, I'll be up all night." He replies in a faint voice, a small laugh accentuating the words<br/><br/>"You don't like mint?"<br/>Shuichi shrugs, "Just. Ah. Not for me."<br/>"Really? We've been together for this long and you've never told me that?"<br/>"I like mint tea, just not that one."<br/>"The licorice?"<br/>"Yeah."<br/><br/>A lul in conversation. <br/><br/>"Now, you should get some sleep. Wouldn't want the breadwinner here to be tired for work tomorrow, would we?"<br/>Shuichi chuckles. "Ah, I don't know if I'd call myself that..."<br/>"I'm a student at 23, Shuichi. I sit around here all day. You have a real job." He looks off to the side, "Guess we all kind of are right now though, huh? Sitting around?"<br/>"Still not letting us back into the office. Only the police and when I need to go investigate."<br/>Rantaro hums.<br/>"Nice not having to get up at 5 AM though, yeah? Extra hour of sleep for you."<br/>Shuichi laughs under his breath.<br/>"Yeah."<br/><br/>"When this is all said and done, I'll take you somewhere?"<br/>"What were you thinking?"<br/>"Well, you did say you wanted to go to Britan, didn't you?"<br/>Shuichi lays back down, but Rantaro thinks he'll stay up just a bit longer. If not to finish up the tea in his hands, to think and consider. But Saihara's quickly fading off. He doesn't mind it.<br/><br/>"Night, sweetheart."<br/>"Goodnight Rantaro."<br/><br/>When the adventurer finishes his tea, Saihara is already asleep on his shoulder.</p>
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